On Friday 27 February, Big Think partner PwC hosted its second global webcast focused on the question, ‘What would you do if you were not afraid?’ The webcast was part of ‘Aspire to Lead: The PwC Women’s...

Cowen fears that emotional seduction by stories usurps rationality, contributing to the everywhere evident comedy of “rational actors” acting irrationally. Econo-monism resolves this ambient anomaly by the “revealed preferences” subplot. An unconscious rational preference for that overpriced trinket was revealed by your buying it. In econo-monism, since we’re rational actors, all we do must have been done for rational reasons. That’s worse than jumping to conclusions; it’s jumping back to your own assumptions. Weak ideas that economists use among themselves needn’t worry us. But publicly preaching econo-monism’s parables can create bad pop-economics, like the history-defying faith that cutting taxes generates growth.

Cognitive science is re-learning what the humanities have always known: “the human mind is a story processor.” To understand a thing is to have a story about it. Narrative and numbers are both powerful thinking tools. But the seeming objectivity and precision of data are limited. So be skeptical of claims that we can count on data and computations to add up to wisdom. Or we may risk incalculable consequences.

Illustration by Julia Suits, The New Yorker Cartoonist & author of The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions.